The Heat Death
of The Universe
by Pamela Zoline
(1) ONTOLOGY
That branch of metaphysics which concerns itself with the problems of the
nature of existence or being.
(2) Imagine a pale blue morning sky,
almost green, with clouds only at the rims. The earth rolls and the sun appears
to mount, mountains erode, fruits decay, the Foraminifera adds another chamber
to its shell, babies' fingernails grow as does the hair of the dead in their
graves, and in egg timers the sands fall and the eggs cook on.
(3) Sarah Boyle thinks of her nose as too
large, though several men have cherished it. The nose is generous and performs
a well-calculated geometric curve, at the arch of which the skin is drawn very
tight and a faint whiteness of bone can be seen showing through, it has much
the same architectural tension and sense of mathematical calculation as the day
after Thanksgiving breastbone on the carcass of a turkey; her maiden name was Sloss, mixed German, English and Irish descent; in grade
school she was very bad at playing softball and, besides being chosen last for
the team, was always made to play center field, no one could ever hit to center
field; she loves music best of all the arts, and of music, Bach, J.S; she lives
in California, though she grew up in Boston and Toledo.
(4) BREAKFAST TIME AT THE BOYLES' HOUSE ON
LA
With some reluctance Sarah Boyle dishes out Sugar Frosted Flakes to her
children, already hearing the decay set in upon the little white milk teeth,
the bony whine of the dentist's drill. The dentist is a short, gentle man with
a moustache who sometimes reminds Sarah of an Uncle who lives in
(5) If one can imagine it considered as an
abstract object, by members of a totally separate culture, one can see that the
cereal box might seem a beautiful thing. The solid rectangle is neatly joined
and classical in proportions, on it are squandered wealths
of richest colours, virgin blues, crimsons, dense ochres, precious pigments once reserved for sacred
paintings and as cosmetics for the blind faces of marble gods. Giant size. Net
Weight 16 ounces, 250 grams. "They're tigeriffic!"
says Tony the Tiger. The box blatts promises. Energy,
Nature's Own Goodness, an endless pubescence. On its back is a mask of William
Shakespeare to be cut out, folded, worn by thousands of tiny Shakespeares in
(6) A notice in orange flourishes states
that a Surprise Gift is to be found somewhere in the packet, nestled amongst
the golden flakes. So far it has not been unearthed, and the children request
more cereal than they wish to eat, great yellow heaps of it, to hurry the
discovery. Even so, at the end of the meal, some layers of flakes remain in the
box and the Gift must still be among them.
(7) There is even a Special Offer of a
secret membership, code and magic ring; these to be obtained by sending in the
box top with 50 cents.
(8) Three offers on one cereal box. To
Sarah Boyle this seems to be oversell. Perhaps something is terribly wrong with
the cereal and it must be sold quickly, got off the shelves before the news
breaks. Perhaps it causes a special, cruel cancer in little children. As Sarah
Boyle collects the bowls printed with bunnies and baseball statistics, still
slopping half full of milk and wilted flakes, she imagines in her mind's eye
the headlines, "Nation's Small Fry Stricken, Fate's Finger Sugar Coated,
Lethal Sweetness Socks Tots."
(9) Sarah Boyle is a vivacious and
intelligent young wife and mother, educated at a fine Eastern college, proud of
her growing family which keeps her busy and happy around the house.
(10) BIRTHDAY
Today is the birthday of one of the children. There will be a party in the late
afternoon.
(11) CLEANING UP THE HOUSE. (ONE.)
Cleaning up the kitchen. Sarah Boyle puts the bowls, plates, glasses and
silverware into the sink. She scrubs at the stickiness on the yellow-marbled formica table with a blue synthetic sponge, a special blue
which we shall see again. There are marks of children's hands in various sizes
printed with sugar and grime on all the table's surfaces. The marks catch the
light, they appear and disappear according to the position of the observing
eye. The floor sweepings include a triangular half of toast spread with grape
jelly, bobby pins, a green Band-Aid, flakes, a doll's eye, dust, dog's hair and
a button.
(12) Until we reach the statistically
likely planet and begin to converse with whatever green-faced teleporting
denizens thereof—considering only this shrunk and communication-ravaged
world—can we any more postulate a separate culture? Viewing the metastasis of
Western Culture it seems progressively less likely. Sarah Boyle imagines a
whole world which has become like
(13) INSERT ONE. ON ENTROPY.
ENTROPY: A quantity introduced in the first place
to facilitate the calculation, and to give clear expressions to the results of
thermodynamics. Changes of entropy can be calculated only for a reversible
process, and may then be defined as the ratio of the amount of heat taken up to
the absolute temperature at which the heat is absorbed. Entropy changes for
actual irreversible processes are calculated by postulating equivalent
theoretical reversible changes. The entropy of a system is a measure of its
degree of disorder. The total entropy of any isolated system can never decrease
in any change; it must either increase (irreversible process) or remain
constant (reversible process). The total entropy of the Universe therefore is
increasing, tending towards a maximum, corresponding to complete disorder of
the particles in it (assuming that it may be regarded as an isolated system.)
See Heat Death of the Universe.
(14) CLEANING UP THE HOUSE. (TWO.)
Washing the baby's diapers. Sarah Boyle writes notes to herself all over the
house; a mazed wild script larded with arrows,
diagrams, pictures, graffiti on every available surface in a desperate/heroic
attempt to index, record, bluff, invoke, order and placate. On the fluted and
flowered white plastic lid of the diaper bin she has written in Blushing Pink Nitetime lipstick a phrase to ward off fumey
ammoniac despair. "The nitrogen cycle is the vital round of organic and
inorganic exchange on earth. The sweet breath of the Universe." On the
wall by the washing machine are Yin and Yang signs, mandalas,
and the words, "Many young wives feel trapped. It is a contemporary
sociological phenomenon which may be explained in part by a gap between
changing living patterns and the accommodation of social services to these
patterns." Over the stove she had written "Help, Help, Help, Help,
Help."
(15) Sometimes she numbers or letters the
things in a room, writing the assigned character on each object. There are 819
separate moveable objects in the living-room, counting books. Sometimes she
labels objects with their names, or with false names, thus on her bureau the
hair brush is labelled HAIR BRUSH, the cologne, COLOGNE, the hand cream, CAT. She is passionately fond of children's
dictionaries, encyclopedias, ABCs and all reference books, transfixed and
comforted at their simulacra of a complete listing and ordering.
(16) On the door of a bedroom are written
two definitions from reference books. "GOD: An object of worship" ; "HOMEOSTASIS: Maintenance of constancy of internal
environment."
(17) Sarah Boyle washes the diapers,
washes the linen, Oh Saint Veronica, changes the sheets on the baby's crib. She
begins to put away some of the toys, stepping over and around the organizations
of playthings which still seem inhabited. There are various vehicles, and
articles of medicine, domesticity and war: whole zoos of stuffed animals,
bruised and odorous with years of love; hundreds of small figures, plastic
animals, cowboys, cars, spacemen, with which the children make sub and supra
worlds in their play. One of Sarah's favourite toys
is the Baba, the wooden Russian doll which, opened, reveals a smaller but
otherwise identical doll which opens to reveal, etc., a lesson in infinity at
least to the number of seven dolls.
(18) Sarah Boyle's mother has been dead
for two years. Sarah Boyle thinks of music as the formal articulation of the
passage of time, and of Bach as the most poignant rendering of this. Her eyes
are sometimes the colour of the aforementioned
kitchen sponge. Her hair is natural spaniel-brown; months ago on an hysterical
day she dyed it red, so now it is two-toned with a stripe in the middle, like
the painted walls of slum buildings or old schools.
(19) INSERT TWO. THE HEAT DEATH OF THE
UNIVERSE.
The second law of thermodynamics can be interpreted to mean that the ENTROPY of a closed system tends towards a
maximum and that its available ENERGY
tends towards a minimum. It has been held that the Universe constitutes a
thermodynamically closed system, and if this were true it would mean that a
time must finally come when the Universe "unwinds" itself, no energy
being available for use. This state is referred to as the "heat death of
the Universe." It is by no means certain, however, that the Universe can
be considered as a closed system in this sense.
(20) Sarah Boyle pours out a Coke from the
refrigerator and lights a cigarette. The coldness and sweetness of the thick
brown liquid make her throat ache and her teeth sting briefly, sweet juice of
my youth, her eyes glass with the carbonation, she thinks of the Heat Death of
the Universe. A logarithmic of those late summer days, endless as the Irish
serpent twisting through jewelled manuscripts
forever, tail in mouth, the heat pressing, bloating, doing violence. The
(21) CLEANING UP THE HOUSE. (THREE.)
Beds made. Vacuuming the hall, a carpet of faded flowers, vines and leaves
which endlessly wind and twist into each other in a fevered and permanent
ecstasy. Suddenly the vacuum blows instead of sucks, spewing marbles, dolls'
eyes, dust, crackers. An old trick. "Oh my god," says Sarah. The baby
yells on cue for attention/changing/food. Sarah kicks the vacuum cleaner and it
retches and begins working again.
(22) AT LUNCH ONLY ONE GLASS OF MILK IS
SPILLED.
At lunch only one glass of milk is spilled.
(23) The plants need watering, Geranium,
Hyacinth, Lavender, Avocado, Cyclamen. Feed the fish, happy fish with china
castles and mermaids in the bowl. The turtle looks more and more unwell and is
probably dying.
(24) Sarah Boyle's blue eyes, how blue?
Bluer far and of a different quality than the Nature metaphors which were both
engine and fuel to so much of precedant literature. A
fine, modern, acid, synthetic blue; the shiny cerulean of the skies on
postcards sent from lush subtropics, the natives grinning ivory ambivalent
grins in their dark faces; the promising fat, unnatural blue of the heavy
tranquilizer capsule; the cool mean blue of that fake kitchen sponge; the
deepest, most unbelievable azure of the tiled and mossless
interiors of California swimming pools. The chemists in their kitchens cooked,
cooled and distilled this blue from thousands of colorless and wonderfully
constructed crystals, each one unique and nonpareil; and now that color,
hisses, bubbles, burns in Sarah's eyes.
(25) INSERT THREE. ON LIGHT.
LIGHT: Name given to the agency by means of
which a viewed object influences the observer's eyes. Consists of
electromagnetic radiation within the wave-length range 4 x 10-5 cm
to 7 x 10-5 cm approximately; variations in the wave-length produce
different sensations in the eye, corresponding to different colors. See color
vision.
(26) LIGHT AND CLEANING THE LIVING ROOM.
All the objects (819) and surfaces in the living room are dusty, gray common
dust as though this were the den of a giant molting mouse. Suddenly quantities
of waves or particles of very strong sunlight speed in through the window, and
everything incandesces, multiple rainbows. Poised in what has become a solid
cube of light, like an ancient insect trapped in amber, Sarah Boyle realizes
that the dust is indeed the most beautiful stuff in the room, a manna for the
eyes. Duchamp, that father of thought, has set with
fixative some dust which fell on one of his sculptures, counting it as part of
the work. "That way madness lies, says Sarah," says Sarah. The
thought of ordering a household on Dada principles balloons again. All the
rooms would fill up with objects, newspapers and magazines would compost, the
potatoes in the rack, the canned green beans in the garbage pale would take new
heart and come to life again, reaching out green shoots towards the sun. The
plants would grow wild and wind into a jungle around the house, splitting
plaster, tearing shingles, the garden would enter in at the door. The goldfish
would die, the birds would die, we' d have them stuffed; the dog would die from
lack of care, and probably the children—all stuffed and sitting around the
house, covered with dust.
(27) INSERT FOUR. DADA.
DADA (Fr., hobby-horse) was a nihilistic
precursor of Surrealism, invented in Zurich during World War I, a product of
hysteria and shock lasting from about 1915 to 1922. It was deliberately
anti-art and anti-sense, intended to outrage and scandalize and its most
characteristic production was the reproduction of the Mona Lisa
decorated with a moustache and the obscene caption LHOOQ (read: elle a chaud au cul) "by" Duchamp.
Other manifestations included Arp's collages of coloured paper cut out at random and shuffled, ready-made
objects such as the bottle drier and the bicycle wheel "signed" by Duchamp, Picabia's drawings of
bits of machinery with incongruous titles, incoherent poetry, a lecture given
by 38 lecturers in unison, and an exhibition in Cologne in 1920, held in an
annex to a café lavatory, at which a chopper was provided for spectators to smash
the exhibits with—which they did.
(28) TIME-PIECES AND OTHER MEASURING DEVICES.
In the Boyle house there are four clocks; three watches (one a Mickey Mouse
watch which does not work); two calendars and two engagement books; three
rulers, a yardstick; a measuring cup; a set of red plastic measuring spoons
which includes a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a one-half teaspoon, one-fourth
teaspoon and one-eighth teaspoon; an egg timer; an oral thermometer and a
rectal thermometer; a Boy Scout compass; a barometer in the shape of a house,
in and out of which an old woman and an old man chase each other forever
without fulfillment; a bathroom scale; an infant scale; a tape measure which
can be pulled out of a stuffed felt strawberry; a wall on which the children's heights
are marked; a metronome.
(29) Sarah Boyle finds a new line in her
face after lunch while cleaning the bathroom. It is as yet barely visible,
running from the midpoint of her forehead to the bridge of her nose. By inward
curling of her eyebrows she can etch it clearly as it will come to appear in
the future. She marks another mark on the wall where she has drawn out a
scoring area. Face Lines and Other Intimations of Mortality, the heading says.
There are thirty-two marks, counting this latest one.
(30) Sarah Boyle is a vivacious and witty
young wife and mother, educated at a fine Eastern college, proud of her growing
family which keeps her happy and busy around the house, involved in many
hobbies and community activities, and only occasionally given to obsessions
concerning Time/Entropy/Chaos and Death.
(31) Sarah Boyle is never quite sure how
many children she has.
(32) Sarah thinks from time to time; Sarah
is occasionally visited with this thought; at times this thought comes upon
Sarah, that there are things to be hoped for, accomplishments to be desired
beyond the mere reproductions, mirror reproduction of one's kind. The babies.
Lying in bed at night sometimes the memory of the act of birth, always the hue
and texture of red plush theatre seats, washes up; the rending which always, at
a certain intensity of pain, slipped into landscapes, the sweet breath of the
sweating nurse. The wooden Russian doll has bright, perfectly round red spots
on her cheeks, she splits in the center to reveal a doll smaller but in all
other respects identical with round bright red spots on her cheeks, etc.
(33) How fortunate for the species, Sarah
muses or is mused, that children are as ingratiating as we know them. Otherwise
they would soon be salted off for the leeches they are, and the race would
extinguish itself in a fair sweet flowering, the last generations' massive
achievement in the arts and pursuits of high civilization. The finest women
would have their tubes tied off at the age of twelve, or perhaps refrain
altogether from the Act of Love? All interests would be bent to a refining and
perfecting of each febrile sense, each fluid hour, with no more cowardly
investment in immortality via the patchy and too often disappointing vegetables
of one's own womb.
(34) INSERT FIVE. LOVE.
LOVE: a typical sentiment involving fondness
for, or attachment to, an object, the idea of which is emotionally colored
whenever it arises in the mind, and capable, as Shand
has pointed out, of evoking any one of a whole gamut of primary emotions,
according to the situation in which the object is placed, or represented;
often, and by psychoanalysts always, used in the sense of sex-love or even lust
(q.v.)
(35) Sarah Boyle has at times felt a unity
with her body, at other times a complete separation. The mind/body duality
considered. The time/space duality considered. The male/female duality
considered. The matter/energy duality considered. Sometimes, at extremes, her
Body seems to her an animal on a leash, taken for walks in the park by her
Mind. The lamp posts of experience. Her arms are lightly freckled and when she
gets very tired the places under her eyes become violet.
(36) Housework is never completed, the
chaos always lurks ready to encroach on any area left unweeded,
a jungle filled with dirty pans and the roaring giant stuffed toy animals
suddenly turned savage. Terrible glass eyes.
(37) SHOPPING FOR THE BIRTHDAY CAKE.
Shopping in the supermarket with the baby in front of the cart and a larger
child holding on. The light from the ice-cube-tray-shaped fluorescent lights is
mixed blue and pink and brighter, colder, and cheaper than daylight. The doors
swing open just as you reach out your hand for them, Tantalus, moving with a
ghastly quiet swing. Hot dogs for the party. Potato chips, gum drops, a paper
tablecloth with birthday designs, hot dog buns, catsup, mustard, picalilli, balloons, instant coffee Continental style, dog
food, frozen peas, ice cream, frozen lima beans, frozen broccoli in butter
sauce, paper birthday hats, paper napkins in three colors, a box of Sugar
Frosted Flakes with a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart mask on the back, bread, pizza
mix. The notes of a just-graspable music filter through the giant store, for
the most part by-passing the brain and acting directly on the liver, blood and
lymph. The air is delicately scented with aluminum. Half and half cream, tea
bags, bacon, sandwich meat, strawberry jam. Sarah is in front of the shelves of
cleaning products now, and the baby is beginning to whine. Around her are whole
libraries of objects, offering themselves. Some of that same old hysteria that
had incarnadined her hair rises up again, and she does not refuse it. There is
one moment when she can choose direction, like standing on a chalk-drawn X, a
hot cross bun, and she does not choose calm and measure. Sarah Boyle begins to
pick out, methodically, deliberately and with a careful ecstasy, one of every
cleaning product which the store sells. Window Cleaner, Glass Cleaner, Brass
Polish, Silver Polish, Steel Wool, eighteen different brands of Detergent,
Disinfectant, Toilet Cleanser, Water Softener, Fabric Softener, Drain Cleanser,
Spot Remover, Floor Wax, Furniture Wax, Car Wax, Carpet Shampoo, Dog Shampoo,
Shampoo for people with dry, oily and normal hair, for people with dandruff,
for people with grey hair. Tooth Paste, Tooth Powder, Denture Cleaner,
Deodorants, Antiperspirants, Antiseptics, Soaps, Cleansers, Abrasives, Oven
Cleansers, Makeup Removers. When the same products appear in different sizes
Sarah takes one of each size. For some products she accumulates whole little
families of containers: a giant Father bottle of shampoo, a Mother bottle, an
Older Sister bottle just smaller than the Mother bottle, and a very tiny Baby
Brother bottle. Sarah fills three shopping carts and has to have help wheeling
them all down the aisles. At the checkout counter her laughter and hysteria
keep threatening to overflow as the pale blonde clerk with no eyebrows like the
Mona Lisa pretends normality and disinterest. The bill comes to $57.53
and Sarah has to write a check. Driving home, the baby strapped in the
drive-a-cot and the paper bags bulging in the back seat, she cries.
(38) BEFORE THE PARTY.
Mrs. David Boyle, mother-in-law of Sarah Boyle, is coming to the party of her
grandchild. She brings a toy, a yellow wooden duck on a string, made in
(39) Sometimes Sarah can hardly remember
how many cute chubby little children she has.
(40) When she used to stand out in center
field far away from the other players, she used to make up songs and sing them
to herself.
(41) She thinks of the end of the world by
ice.
(42) She thinks of the end of the world by
water.
(43) She thinks of the end of the world by
nuclear war.
(44) There must be more than this, Sarah
Boyle thinks, from time to time. What could one do to justify one's passage? Or
less ambitiously, to change, even in the motion of the smallest mote, the
course and circulation of the world? Sometimes Sarah's dreams are of heroic
girth, a new symphony using laboratories of machinery and all invented instruments,
at once giant in scope and intelligible to all, to heal the bloody breach; a
series of paintings which would transfigure and astonish and calm the frenzied
art world in its panting race; a new novel that would refurbish language.
Sometimes she considers the mystical, the streaky and random, and it seems that
one change, no matter how small, would be enough. Turtles are supposed to live
for many years. To carve a name, date and perhaps a word of hope upon a
turtle's shell, then set him free to wend the world, surely this one act might
cancel out absurdity?
(45) Mrs. David Boyle has a faint
moustache, like Duchamp's Mona Lisa.
(46) THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.
Many children dressed in pastels, sit around the long table. They are exhausted
and overexcited from games fiercely played, some are flushed and wet, others
unnaturally pale. This general agitation, and the paper party hats they wear,
combine to make them appear a dinner party of debauched midgets. It is time for
the cake. A huge chocolate cake in the shape of a rocket and launching pad and
covered with blue and pink icing is carried in. In the hush the birthday child
begins to cry. He stops crying, makes a wish and blows out the candles.
(47) One child will not eat hot dogs, ice
cream or cake, and asks for cereal. Sarah pours him out a bowl of Sugar Frosted
Flakes, and a moment later he chokes. Sarah pounds him on the back, and out
spits a tiny green plastic snake with red glassy eyes, the Surprise Gift. All
the children want it.
(48) AFTER THE PARTY THE CHILDREN ARE PUT TO
BED.
(49) INSERT SIX. WEINER ON ENTROPY.
In Gibb's Universe order is least probable, chaos most probable. But while the
Universe as a whole, if indeed there is a whole Universe, tends to run down,
there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the Universe
at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for
organization to increase. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves.
(50) Sarah Boyle imagines, in her mind's
eye, cleaning, and ordering the great world, even the Universe. Filling the
great spaces of Space with a marvellous sweet
smelling, deep cleansing foam. Deodorizing rank caves and volcanoes. Scrubbing
rocks.
(51) INSERT SEVEN. TURTLES.
Many different species of carnivorous Turtles live in the fresh waters of the
tropical and temperate zones of various continents. Most northerly of the
European Turtles (extending as far as
(52) CLEANING UP AFTER THE PARTY.
Sarah is cleaning up after the party. Gum drops and melted ice cream surge off
paper plates, making holes in the paper tablecloth through the printed roses. A
fly has died a splendid death in a pool of strawberry ice cream. Wet jelly
beans stain all they touch, finally becoming themselves colorless, opaque white
flocks of tames or sleeping maggots. Plastic favors mount half-eaten pieces of
blue cake. Strewn about are thin strips of fortune papers from the Japanese
poppers. Upon them are printed strangely assorted phrases selected by
apparently unilingual Japanese. Crowds of delicate yellow people spending great
chunks of their lives in producing these most ephemeral of objects, and
inscribing thousands of fine papers with absurd and incomprehensible messages.
"The very hairs of your head are all numbered," reads one. Most of the
balloons have popped. Someone has planted a hot dog in the daffodil pot. A few
of the helium balloons have escaped their owners and now ride the ceiling.
Another fortune paper reads, "Emperor's horses meet death worse, numbers,
numbers."
(53) She is very tired, violet under the
eyes, mauve beneath the eyes. Her uncle in
(54) She begins to cry. She goes to the
refrigerator and takes out a carton of eggs, white eggs, extra large. She
throws them one by one onto the kitchen floor which is patterned with
strawberries in squares. They break beautifully. There is a Secret Society of
Dentists, all moustached, with Special Code and Magic
Rings. She begins to cry. She takes up three bunny dishes and throws them
against the refrigerator; they shatter, and then the floor is covered with
shards, chunks of partial bunnies, an ear, an eye here, a paw; Stockton,
California, Acton, California, Chico, California, Redding, California Glen
Ellen, California, Cadix, California, Angels Camp,
California, Half Moon Bay. The total ENTROPY of the Universe therefore is increasing, tending towards a
maximum, corresponding to complete disorder of the particles in it. She is
crying, her mouth is open. She throws a jar of grape jelly and it smashes the
window over the sink. It has been held that the Universe constitutes a
thermodynamically closed system, and if this were true it would mean that a
time must finally come when the Universe "unwinds" itself, no energy
being available for use. This state is referred to as the "Heat Death of
the Universe." Sarah Boyle begins to cry. She throws a jar of strawberry
jam against the stove, enamel chips off and the stove begins to bleed. Bach had
twenty children, how many children has Sarah Boyle? Her mouth is open. Her
mouth is opening. She turns on the water and fills the sink with detergent. She
writes on the kitchen wall, "William Shakespeare has Cancer and lives in